


Studying The Masters

by silveradept



Series: Cirque d'Akuma [2]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Adrien Agreste Gets Fanart Ideas, Adult Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir, Adult Alix Kubdel | Bunnyx, Adult Lê Chiến Kim, Adult Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Clown Training Of A Sort, F/M, Professional Wrestling - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:54:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23101264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silveradept/pseuds/silveradept
Summary: In which Kim and Alix drag Adrien to a professional wrestling match because if you want to watch how to do physical clowning before a deadline, there are very few better places available for the price of a ticket than the professional wrestling circuit.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste & Alix Kubdel & Lê Chiến Kim, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Alix Kubdel & Lê Chiến Kim
Series: Cirque d'Akuma [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1660402
Comments: 4
Kudos: 30





	Studying The Masters

"What am I doing here, Kim?" Adrien asked, as they moved toward their seats. "I thought we were going to help me train to be a better clown for the varieté."

"This is training," Kim replied earnestly.

"I still don't understand," Adrien said, scratching his head.

"What Kim should be saying," Alix said, appearing on Adrien's other side, balancing drinks and snacks, "is that we are going to spend the next several hours watching the very best at professional clowning. With ringside seats, no less. How did you manage to get these, Kim?"

Kim shrugged. "Right place, right time. I bought them from a guy who had just seriously misjudged how deep his relationship was. They're probably cursed."

Adrien shot his friend a concerned look to match Alix's glare from the other side.

"What?" Kim said, taking in their reactions. "If these were akuma bait, Hawkmoth would have already done something about it, right?"

Alix shook their head. "Kim, should we be concerned that you'd risk getting van Goghed by Voldemort for the possibility of good tickets?"

"Wouldn't you?" Kim retorted. "After all, Ladybug and Chat Noir have kept a clean sheet so far."

Adrien smiled at the banter. For a moment, it felt like their earlier times at Collège François Dupont, before lycée and university, and then the slow scattering of their class to study and work as they went their separate ways and pursued their passions. For Adrien, of course, remarkably little had changed. His father still insisted on trying to micromanage his life through Nathalie, assuming that when the modeling circuit was done with Adrien, he'd settle into learning the family business. 

He'd at least managed to get his own place away from the mansion after several "incidents" where Nathalie appeared to almost catch him in the act of doing something bad for the business with several of his photoshoot friends. Lila, of course, had been the one who wanted to turn it into an actual incident. And, conveniently, had also been the only one where there was definite proof of what had happened. He knew he should have felt worse than he did about her ensuing akumatization from the rejection, but Adrien had realized after a few shoots that Lila was the sort of person who refused to take no for an answer, no matter how directly it was said, and so he considered it a small price to pay for finally getting her to give up her designs on him.

What had surprised him at the time was that _Marinette_ had suggested it to him. She'd also suggested a training session when it came time to pull the same stunt with Kagami, so that they would all be on the same page. Adrien hadn't minded the extra time spent getting to know Kagami better as they both waited for the tabloids to lose interest in their not-really scandalous behavior. A later letter from Kagami suggested that the scandal had done both of them good toward getting out from under their parents' thumbs. 

Before he could get too far in to his feelings about his family life, Alix nudged him into the row for their seats. "You didn't pay attention to a word we were saying, did you?" they asked.

"Nope," Adrien said cheerily, trying to dispel the malaise that came from thinking too hard about his situation.

"So, as we were saying, we were hoping you could resolve a dispute once you have seen the performance. Kim, here, seems to believe that having mic skills is more important to making a superstar than being able to do the work in the ring. I blame this entirely on his complete devotion to The Rock ever since he heard the first 'jabronie' uttered."

"Alix, on the other hand," Kim picked up smoothly, "seems to think that being able to walk the walk, so to speak, is more important than being able to get the crowd chanting your name. Color me unsurprised that they really follow the cruiserweight divisions and seem to think the top rope is solely for chumps and botches."

"What are you talking about?" Adrien said, as they found their seats.

"Well, normally, before subjecting you to the grand awe-inspiring showcase that is a live show, I'd make sure you were up on the storylines, the characters, and the feuds, but that usually takes a few months to get through," Kim said. "Since we're starting you on Hawkmoth, though, that means we've got to get your game up to speed in a hurry. You're not only going to have to talk like a maniac, you're going to have to take hits like one, too, especially from your girlfriend."

Adrien smiled. While he never knew how much Alix had been told by Bunnyx at any given time, he knew Kim would be a lot less concerned about his abilities to take a fall if he knew that Adrien had all the practice being Chat Noir had given him at being battered around by friends and enemies alike. He'd joked with Marinette that it would be harder for her to pretend to send him flying than to actually do it. Marinette hadn't taken kindly to it at all, and he'd spent the night in the cathouse before being able to apologize.

"Instead," Alix was saying, "you're going in unspoiled, so you can pay closer attention to the physicality and athleticism on display and not get sucked into any greater narrative concerns. Here are the basics: who wins has already been determined, but how they get there is what's magic, you are looking at highly-trained stunt performers and clowns, so pay attention to how they make it look worse than it is, and pay absolutely no attention to the screaming goofball over there unless you need cues about who to cheer for and who to boo."

"I couldn't find a lucha libre promotion that was here in time, okay?" Kim said, putting some popcorn in a smaller bowl and passing Alix the tub.

Adrien's follow-up question was swallowed in the wall of sound that indicated the start of the entertainment. After some explanation about safety for everyone involved, the lights went out in the arena. Jagged Stone's "Less Than Impossible" began to play as a montage of images flashed on a board before the entrance of the first wrestler scheduled for the match.

"Do they always wear so little clothing?" Adrien shouted over the music.

"Yes," Kim and Alix replied simultaneously.

"With a body like that, why not show it off?" Kim added, nodding approvingly.

"You're a model, Adrien, you've probably worn less," Alix teased.

He had, but it felt qualitatively different to be in a shoot where only the photographer and their official staff were present to see him in the underwear than to be performing an entire act with trunks that left very little to the imagination.

" _I'm_ not going to be wearing that little, am I?" Adrien asked Kim, as the second wrestler's theme heralded their appearance, wearing much the same as the first wrestler. 

"No," Kim said, giving Adrien a questioning look. "Burlesque auditions were last week."

"I thought you only did impro," Adrien replied.

"Work is work," Kim retorted. "And, besides, I know how good I look in a Speedo already." He waved at the ring, where both wrestlers had finished their grandstanding for the audience. The bell rang to begin the match and Adrien watched one of the wrestlers take two feet to the chest, hitting the mat with a loud sound. By all rights, he should have had the wind knocked out of him, based on how most akuma reacted to Ladybug kicking them so soundly, but he popped back up from the mat and began to grapple again, trading loud slaps across the chest with each other.

"Oh, come on," Alix grumbled. "You're supposed to be light and nimble. Shoot his legs or use the ropes! Don't just stand there and try to make me think you can punch him." The smaller wrestler disengaged and bounced themselves off the ropes to try and gather momentum, only to be met with the outstretched arm of the bigger wrestler, turning a near flip from the apparent impact to land on his stomach.

Adrien knew, from having been whammied by just about every blow of imaginable impact, that the body didn't do that when struck. If it was supposed to be realistic, the smaller wrestler would have just dropped to the mat on his back. Getting up, Adrien saw the smaller wrestler try the same move, duck underneath the outstretched arm, try to grab the bigger wrestler by the waist and lift him off the ground, which went nowhere, before the bigger wrestler turned around, grabbed the smaller one by in a similar grip, then slammed him down to the mat. 

Except he hadn't, Adrien realized belatedly. Right before being picked up, the smaller wrestler had flexed his knees subtly. Which made sense. It was far easier to pick up someone who was helping you do it than trying to do it to someone who had no intention of going anywhere. Adrien flushed slightly, remembering the first time he'd tried to pick Marinette up to get her away from an akuma and nearly couldn't, even with Chat Noir's extra strength. Unlike the cheery bakery girl front she'd presented to him and the class, Marinette was nearly all muscle and very little padding. It was one of the subtle clues he would point back to once he knew who she was in her other life, but at the time he'd been too surprised at how heavy she was to make the connection.

He watched the bigger wrestler grab the smaller one in a chokehold, before lifting him with the single hand and slamming him back down to the mat and covering him until the bell rang to signal the end. Kim booed the result, and Alix looked distinctly unimpressed with what they had seen.

"I take it that wasn't impressive?" Adrien asked.

"Eh, this angle's pretty terrible," Kim said. "I don't particularly like his heel persona that much, but he seems to be sticking with it for now."

Adrien shrugged and turned to Alix.

"Too much telegraphing and not enough high-flying for that kind of match," Alix said. "Small guys need some extra spots to look credible in a match against bigger guys, and these two just weren't it. Maybe the next match will have a better pace."

The next match involved two men and a ladder with a briefcase dangling from the top of it. Adrien concentrated on trying to see how the wrestlers cooperated with each other while they were supposedly fighting each other. For as many times as the wrestlers were going to take hits to the face from the ladder or something else that would otherwise leave a mark, they always seemed to flail an arm right in front of where their head would hit to absorb the blow. Being thrown or slammed down to the mat seemed to involve a little bounce beforehand to make sure the thrower wasn't doing too much work, and almost always involved landing in such a way to distribute the force across as much surface area as possible. The longer he watched, the more Adrien was ready to kick himself mentally for not having taken up an art or discipline where he would have learned how to fall like this long before having to do in a real situation. The suit had helped absorb a lot of the impact, but there had still been the occasional bruise that had needed hiding even after the Miraculous Cure worked its magic on him. He was pretty sure all of his makeup artists were convinced that his father had been physically abusing him, and Adrien had never really felt the need to correct them about what kind of abuse was happening. He'd hoped that one of them might go to the police with what they suspected, but he also knew that making that accusation without perfect proof would only have resulted in being banned from any further Agreste event, and…well, people could overlook a lot of things if the money was right.

Both wrestlers were at the top of the ladder, gripping and striking at each other, before one of the wrestlers gave the other a shove, grabbed the briefcase, and jumped off the ladder to the mat below. The other wrestler just barely jumped from the ladder before it fell over completely, rolling as he landed to get away, then sliding out underneath the ropes, a very angry look in his eyes. The winner of the match saw the look and ran for the wrestler's entrance, the loser hot on his heels.

"Something went wrong there, didn't it?" Adrien asked Alix, after realizing they had gripped their legs tightly at some point during the match. 

Alix blinked, looked at Adrien, and nodded. "Kim!" they called. "That botch was so bad, Adrien noticed!"

"Double botch," Kim replied. "Boot slipped with the briefcase." Seeing Adrien's look of confusion, he explained further, "Any botch is dangerous to everyone involved, and this one could have been a disaster. The winner of the match lost his footing as he was coming down the ladder and jumped to avoid falling, but in doing so, he caused the other wrestler to lose his footing, and when the other wrestler jumped, the ladder fell over. Thankfully, nobody got hurt, but they'll have some words about it in the locker room."

Alix put the now empty tub of popcorn in Adrien's hands and said, "Go get us some more, please."

"I'm supposed to be observing, aren't I?" Adrien said, confused.

"Next match is the Women's Division. They're getting better at recruiting people who aren't just there for eye candy," Alix said, shrugging, "but you won't learn anything useful from this match. Main event is next, so be back by the time the bell sounds!"

The climb was a nice stretch, and thankfully, not many other people thought of this match as one to take care of getting more snacks, so Adrien was through the line fairly quickly. Pausing at the top of the stairs for a moment before diving back in, Adrien's gaze took in the rest of the arena, nodding to himself as another useful piece of information presented itself. He'd wondered why everything that happened during the match was so flamboyant, so big and broad. Now he understood that everything that happened in the ring needed to be seen by the people in the farthest-away seats, so of course it had to be big and obvious. He'd have to do the same thing when he was clowning. Thankfully, Hawkmoth's flair for dramatic gestures would go over extremely well in that regard.

As he was starting back toward the seats, he saw someone burst into the ring, a microphone floating on front of his face.

"I am the AKUMATIZER!" they shouted, "and all of you will fuel my stable of invincible wrestlers for Hawkmoth with your heat!" 

"Didn't think Hawkmoth was a wrestling fan," Adrien quipped, retreating back up the stairs and looking for a place to transform.

"He's not," Bunnyx, Alix's older, Miraculous-wielding, and time-traveling self said to Adrien, popping out of a white hole in front of him. "This one is from a different reality and jumped through a portal provided by someone other than yours truly to get here."

"So it's clobberin' time?" Adrien said eagerly.

"You're sitting this one out, mini-kitty," Bunnyx said. "No Hulk Smash for you. The heroes of that world are already on their way." Bunnyx snagged some popcorn from his bucket. "Enjoy the show."

At the entryway to the ring, the video board burst into Clara Nightingale's music video for this world's Ladybug and Chat Noir, before a portal in purple appeared, revealing two characters who were clearly Ladybug and Chat Noir, if they had been designed as professional wrestling characters.

"Wow, I'm ripped," Adrien said, eyeing Chat, who had black boots, green trunks, a much more realistic-looking tail, his usual domino mask, and apparently much more cat-like eyes, if the camera pan showing on the video board was to be believed.

"Not strictly you, mini-kitty," Bunnyx said cryptically.

Turning his attention to Chat's partner, Adrien struggled to find a word to adequately describe the sight of this Ladybug. She had lost none of the toned and muscular body that his Marinette had grown into and maintained through their continued battling of superpowered villains, her work baking treats, and the regular practice she had stretching and flexing herself outside of the mask. Strong legs were framed by black boots and red biker shorts, and the video pan made it clear that there were superior abdominals between the shorts and the red top. Which left very little to his imagination to fill in details with (and, Adrien realized, was probably made of something stretchy, maybe Lycra, so as to provide not one centimeter more than strictly necessary of coverage below the shoulder straps).

"Done looking yet?" Bunnyx teased.

"I don't believe I've ever seen my Lady that…buxom," Adrien said, scrambling to find an appropriate word. "She looks a lot more like some of the fanart I've bought of—for her at cons."

The bell sounded to start the match, and both Ladybug and Chat Noir rushed to the ringside, Chat sliding in underneath the bottom rope and popping up with an uppercut to the Akumatizer that didn't seem to do anything at all. Chat followed with strikes that should have sent his opponent reeling, but they landed without apparent damage or impact. After a while, the akuma flicked Chat on the nose and sent him flying, the crowd roaring in approval.

Repeatedly, Chat attempted to land solid blows on the akuma, who didn't seem affected by them at all, and then the akuma barely made an effort, which sent Chat away, to the crowd's delight. Adrien frowned at the scene.

"The crowd only cheers when the villain attacks, and somehow, his power is increased by having the audience on his side. If I could get down there—"

"Nope," Bunnyx said. "You go down there, you get caught up in the spell, identities are revealed, Bad Future, and I have to do some serious work to avert that timeline that I don't want to have to do more than the once I already did."

"Well, there has to be some way of helping them out that doesn't involve me being in the audience. What if I could get to the video board or the sound system? Would that be a problem?"

"Nothing comes to mind," Bunnyx said, "but how are you going to get in there?"

"You," Adrien said. "You can go anywhere, any time, right?"

"Now you're thinking with portals," Bunnyx quipped, grinning, and carved a white hole for Adrien to jump through. 

"Plagg, claws out!" Adrien said, making sure his transformed self would be the one popping in to take control. 

Adrien landed in the control room, where several of the technicians had been transformed into masked wrestlers themselves. Unlike the akuma in the ring, though, this Chat could defeat them with his baton and martial arts skills. Staring at the control board once he was done securing the room, he clipped one of the ear communicators onto his cat ears while looking for something to use. The commentators' voices narrated the match in front of them with breathless superlatives, punctuated by crowd noise cheering on The Akumatizer. Which, as he examined the control boards and their labels, had a slider of its own, and one marked for boos next to it. Adrien watched the akuma swing at the wrestler Chat, sending him to the ropes. Adrien swapped the sliders, to make it sound like the crowd disapproved of the move.

The reaction was immediate. Whirling around, the akuma looked for the source of the boos, and the crowd began to react the same way. Taking advantage of the distraction, Wrestler Noir flung his arms around the akuma and lifted them into a suplex, slamming the akuma to the mat over his shoulders. Adrien pumped up the cheers as Chat gave Ladybug a high five, who proceeded to immediately leap up to the top of one of the corners of the ring and turn a graceful forward flip, sticking the landing by driving her boots onto the chest of the akuma.

"There's some damage Miraculous Cure won't fix!" the commentator said excitedly. "Ladybug is going for the top corner again. High-flying maneuvers are one of her highlights as she gets ready to unleash again."

Ladybug leapt, and the akuma rolled away to avoid being struck before scrambling to their feet. Anticipating this defense, Ladybug landed on the mat on her feet, using the bounce in the mat to spring onto her hands and launch herself so that the akuma caught both boots in the chin, sending them both back toward the corner where Wrestler Noir was waiting.

The akuma fell back, but recovered quickly and charged Ladybug with a bull rush. She stopped it with a quick kick to the akuma's head before locking the akuma's head between her thighs and lifting their arms in hers.

Adrien simultaneously wished the Chat Noir suit wasn't skintight at that moment and was thankful that his Lady couldn't see exactly what he was thinking about in the control room as she leapt and drove the akuma's head into the mat with her thighs. "There's showing your pedigree!" the commentator shouted in his ear. Adrien blinked in confusion, since it really looked more like Wrestler Noir was the human-animal hybrid.

The akuma sprung back at her, arm outstretched to grab. Ladybug turned to dodge the grab, wrapped the akuma's face in her hands, and then dropped to her butt, slamming the akuma's throat into her shoulder as the commentator excitedly talked about a stunner from the stunning beauty. Adrien filed that one away in case there was a next time that he could use it, even as he worried he might start suffering a nosebleed from how exciting the action was.

The akuma wobbled over toward Wrestler Noir, still feeling the effects of Ladybug's ministrations. Ladybug slapped Wrestler Noir's hand, stepping out of the ring before her partner stepped in and wrapped the akuma in a bear hug. In response, the akuma flipped him onto the mat. Adrien swapped the cheers for boos as the akuma began to hammer on the other Chat, who fell back under the assault and ended up grabbing the ropes to try and brace from the attack. Eventually, the referee intervened, trying to stop the assault.

The akuma turned long enough to glare the referee back. When he turned back to Wrestler Noir, the black cat caught him by the throat, a familiar black orb springing into his other hand.

Adrien killed the boos just as the announcer crowed, "Here it is! The Cataclysm Chokeslam!" Wrestler Noir grabbed the microphone with his destructive hand as he lifted the akuma into the air and slammed him to the mat. A purple butterfly floated out of the microphone.

"No more heel behavior for you, little akuma," Ladybug said, spinning her yo-yo and capturing the butterfly. Wrestler Noir gently covered the akuma and pressed his shoulders to the mat. The referee slid down and began counting, slapping his hand on the mat with each number.

"One, two, three! _MIRACULOUS LADYBUG!_ " the crowd shouted, as the bell rang to signal the end of the match. Ladybug flung the Lucky Charm she had conjured while Adrien's attention was elsewhere into the air, bursting into the familiar rush of ladybugs, setting everything back the way it was before and the akuma's power flowed out, leaving a very confused young person in the grip of the wrestling cat. The referee raised one arm of Ladybug, one of Wrestler Noir, and Clara's music began to play again.

"Time to go, mini-kitty," Bunnyx said, pulling Adrien back into the warp and depositing him back where he had been, a full bucket of popcorn waiting for him. As he descended back to Kim and Alix, he saw a white flash right after the wrestling superhero pair disappeared backstage.

"Safe travels, my Lady," he murmured.

"Adrien! You missed it all!" Kim complained. "There was a wrestling akuma, and Ladybug and Chat Noir fought it in the ring! It was hype!"

"I wish you could have seen it," Alix added. "Ladybug nailed all her spots with precision, and Chat Noir didn't try to do too much, sticking to brawling and only needing to hit one important spot for the match. It was a really good on all the technical points. I hope the Ladyblog gets a copy of the stream, so we can look at it later."

"I saw some of it," Adrien said. "Things looked pretty good from my vantage point. I understand more now about clowning to the farthest seats, at least."

"Good," Kim said. 

Alix nodded along, then shook their empty bowl at Adrien. "Main event is coming, can't have an empty bowl for it."

Adrien filled Kim and Alix's bowls from the tub and settled in to watch the next match.

* * *

"What did you do today?" Marinette asked when Adrien came in the door.

"Kim and Alix took me to see professional wrestling. Said it would help me understand how to clown better."

"Did it?"

"Weirdly enough, I think so," Adrien said. "Although, mostly it gave me a lot of ideas about outfits I would love to see you in."

"Things for your fanart collection, then," Marinette teased.

"…some of them," Adrien admitted. "Others, I think you could adapt so they showcase you."

"Silly kitty," Marinette said, lightly booping his nose. "What would the tabloids think if Ladybug started showing a little more leg?"

Adrien shut his mouth firmly to avoid saying his first response. Marinette laughed at the effort. "Exactly," she said, ruffling his hair. "I'm perfectly fine with being your best-kept secret," she added, kissing him lightly and turning back to the design she had own in her computer.

"Not for long," Adrien said quietly. "Soon, everyone will know what a wonderful woman you are."


End file.
